DP active in acquisition

have heard today that DP have purchased an independent postal operator in Germany called First Mail Düsseldorf.

This was done in secret on July 1st 2003 and was not apparently notified to the regulator, which they should have done. The Regulation says that if any company purchases more than 10% of a licensed postal operator they must inform the Regulator, but apparently there is no fine or penalty for not doing so. There have been some rumours and it will be published for the first time by Ludwig-Michael this Saturday – he will send us a copy of the article. The Regulator has confirmed that they have not been formally notified, although they had also heard rumours in the market place.

First Mail Düsseldorf was a partner in the TPG majority owned network of private postal operators called EP Euro Post although it may not have actually handled much on behalf of them.

First Mail has an overnight license which means collecting after 5pm and delivering before 12 noon the next day. They are one of a number of private postal operators who do this on a local/local or even a regional/regional basis and have been taking high margin traffic off DP.

When asked (by Ludwig-Michael) why they purchased this business the response was they did it for market research reasons to understand how these private operators worked. They are clearly worried about the extent to which this high margin sector (i.e. local / local) was being taken from them by the private operators (there are suggestions that this particular mail flow has a margin of 20%). There is a large one in Berlin for example which apparently handles 100,000 items a night local/local.

Robin